Boris Johnson: my part in his downfall
...according to Twitter (Header image by Amer Ghazzal / Alamy)
Like most of the country I’ve been watching with fascination the self-inflicted demise of Boris Johnson, the scrabbling like rats in a sack of Tory ‘colleagues’ who dumped him overboard after fearing electoral wipeout - and the delusional tantrums of ‘Boris’ supporters who blame everyone else but ‘Boris’ for his failure to even make it to one full term as PM before peak boosterism caught up with a discredited man who has probably stopped counting just how many times he’s been sacked for lying.
And now, according to someone I’ve never heard of (and am surprised to discover has apparently heard of me) I’m to blame as well!
Now I would love to take some credit for ousting a man widely described as the worst prime-minister in recent history, but I can’t. Maybe with tear-stained eyes and shaking finger, Geth is also tapping out his woeful comments onto the feeds of actual influencers like Led By Donkeys (whose artful video summary of BJ’s entitlement, cheating, and lies has been viewed 10million+ times now), but a) I’m not going to check, and b) the point here is really that Johnson’s confused superfans are determined to lay the blame at every door except No10 itself.
Which is just delusional. After all, who tried to change Parliamentary rules to help out his chum Owen Paterson after he was caught up to his elbows in the lobbyist's cookie jar? Who, while married to someone else, was caught in flagrante in his office with Carrie Symonds and persuaded The Times to spike the story - leading to the story being printed everywhere? Who treated his own lockdown rules with contempt leading The New Yorker to ask in January this year “Can “Partygate” Bring Down Boris Johnson?”? Who declared his own Brexit deal ‘oven ready’ before caving into the ERG and unilaterally attempting to rewrite a binding international treaty while the ink was still drying? Who defended Priti Patel from bullying claims and then promoted a serial abuser he was quoted as calling ‘Pincher by name, Pincher by Nature’ to a role that included enforcing Parliamentary discipline? I could go on, but who ‘smeared ‘Johnson? Yeah, we all know the answer to that…
Quite why Geth doesn’t pick up on this is inexplicable - until perhaps you have a look at who he follows on Twitter. I don’t normally go in for this sort of thing because we all operate in bubbles and I’m similarly open to the charge that I’m also only interested in a set of views and opinions I trust and find interesting, but I would only say that were you to follow conspiracy theorist nutjob Laurence Fox, alt-right outlet Breitbart News, climate crisis denier Julia Hartley-Brewer, and Trump’s man in the UK Nigel Farage it’s entirely possible that your timeline might contain a big dollop or two of irrationality…
It’s fascinating and genuinely disturbing to see who these people do blame for Johnson’s implosion, by the way. I don’t recommend reading them, but the misogynist and delusional comments posted on Paul ‘The Man who would be Lord’ Dacre’s Daily Mail sums up just how detached from reality Johnson’s supporters are. It was Carrie wot dunnit of course. Or Dominic Cummings. Or Meghan. Or …[fill in the blanks just don’t suggest it might be down to the ethical void that is the greased piglet himself].
The truth - of course - is that Johnson himself is to blame, closely followed by the very MPs who had kept in power right up to the moment when polling made clear that with him at the helm for another two years many of them (especially in the south) would be forced to look for fresh employment opportunities after the next general election. That’s why - after electing him, standing by him disaster after disaster, and turning blind corrupted eye after blind corrupted eye to his failings - they belatedly turned on him instead. Not for the good of the country, the environment, our dwindling biodiversity, the climate, or even for the good of us citizens: for themselves.
The whining will continue right up to the moment Johnson is prised out of Downing Street of course (though expect miles of column inches telling us what a good job he’s been doing while he’s been squatting in No10, and asking us all whether we really want to see him go (a thousand times yes)) - and lot’s more of the contradictory thinking on ‘democracy’ that Geth and his chums are renowned for.
“All becuase (sic) you want democracy to go your way, your (sic) desperation just makes you look dumb I'm afraid” (hey, we all post typos so no criticism from me for that)…Well, yes, Gethin, of course I want democracy to go my way. Just like you do. All of us want what we think is best and I - along with many, many others - don’t think that as the world’s climate teeters on the brink of changing enough to make life - all life - unsustainable, the lazy-thinking of a climate crisis denier like Steve Baker is for the best.
Screenshot ‘Ranked: how green are the Tory leadership candidates?‘. The Guardian, 08 July 22
If you want him, persuade him to reverse his decision not to stand (taken because he “would be very much fishing in the same pond for votes” as Johnson’s former useful idiot Suella Braverman). That’s how democracy works after all.
In the meantime, what was my part in Johnson’s downfall? Non-existent, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that I'm not proud to have been consistent, as articulate as possible when putting forward my arguments, and - as we now all know - being on the right side of history.
As I said in my tweeted response though, thanks for the plaudits…and you’re welcome.